ISA Edmonton 2006

Eliminating OPC Setup Headaches
Presenter: Sean Leonard, OPC Product Manager
Wednesday April 5th: 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM

From the shop floor to the top floor, OPC is the preferred communication standard for sharing process control data at all levels of the enterprise. But as OPC pours into mainstream acceptance, integrators are finding configurations where OPC can be a hindrance to the panacea of plug-and-play application interconnectivity. The most common situation occurs when applications on different Windows domains must communicate with each other. Still, other designs call for the use of low-bandwidth or unreliable networks. Rapidly detecting what is hampering OPC connectivity and knowing the solution is the key to successfully integrating OPC.

OPC Security: Controlling Access to Critical System Data
Presenter: Sean Leonard, OPC Product Manager
Wednesday April 5th: 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM

Now that OPC has successfully solved connecting applications to data sources, the next step is to explore how OPC can control access to critical data. Critical system data linked via OPC requires restrictions on who has read and/or write access. On an application level, OPC utilizes Windows security to control access to data. The OPC Security specification enables a more granular approach to data access control. Using the OPC Security specification it is possible to control exactly who has what access to critical system data.

Alarm Blunders: What Not to Do In Alarm Management
Presenter: Mik Marvan, Product Manager, Alarm Management Solutions
Thursday April 6th: 2:15 PM - 3:00 PM

The alarm system is the primary tool for identifying abnormal situations and helping plant personnel take timely, appropriate corrective action. Effective alarm systems create effective operators; ineffective systems pose a serious risk to safety, the environment, and plant profitability. Too often, alarm system effectiveness is undermined by poorly configured alarms, static alarm settings that can't adapt to dynamic plant conditions, and a host of other nuisance alarms, resulting in alarm floods that overwhelm operators when they need to focus on potentially serious problems. As a result, operators and engineers in the process control industry have become increasingly aware of the value that alarm management solutions offer.
As these solutions become more common, industry understanding of the factors that impact their success has grown.

Security and Data Access: Striking the Right Balance
Presenter: Rick Kaun, Senior Network Security Specialist
Thursday April 6th 3:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Industry continues to put pressure on technology in two strong and counterintuitive directions: increased need for connectivity and access to remote data sources; and the need for information security. More connections generally mean more security risks or holes, and OPC has traditionally been good for connecting to data, but not for securing it. As this need increases, we come to rely more and more on products like OPC drivers to connect applications and ultimately users to the data, and a strong need for accountability and controlling who accesses the data; logging user access goes a long way towards increasing both security and accountability.

The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society presents ISA Edmonton 2006 Show Floor Vendor presentations. Realizing Your Assets is the theme for the ISA 2006 Edmonton Exhibit & Technical Training & Development Program. The 2006 Show focuses on Employees as the vital asset in any organization.